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2011 22: 547Discourse SocietyJacqueline McDowell and Spencer Schaffner

BowlFootball, it's a man's game: Insult and gendered discourse in The Gender

  

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Football, it’s a man’s game: Insult and gendered discourse in The Gender Bowl

Jacqueline McDowell and Spencer SchaffnerUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

AbstractWomen’s participation as athletes in American football precipitates gendered conflict, in that the routine reproduction of masculine discourse and identity is challenged. As such, the purpose of this study was to explore how the creation of discourses of masculinity and femininity undermine most women’s access and acceptance into American football. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, an analysis of The Gender Bowl (Jordan et al., 2005), a reality TV program featuring a full-contact football game between women and men, revealed how men sought to preserve the social relations of football and how women sought to contest this masculine domain in part by adopting typically masculine linguistic practices of insult. Results of the analysis revealed interdiscursivity of two discourses of gender relations: discourses of conservative gender relations iterated by the men, discourses of conflict from both men and women, and discourses of egalitarian gender relations iterated by the women.

Keywordsbattle of the sexes, football, gender, Gender Bowl, insult

Let’s leave the women folk at home, this is football, women folk don’t play football. Women folk watch football, they enjoy football, we appreciate them watching, but guys, let’s leave the women folk home and let’s get to business. (Put Up Your Dukes, former sports television talk show)There are so many things about playing football that seem to me uniquely American. Anybody can succeed, anybody can play, but you’ve got to work hard to do it. (Dean Cain, American actor, cited in Lineback, 2004)

Corresponding author:Jacqueline McDowell, Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 104 Huff Hall, MC-584, 1206 South Fourth Street, Champaign, IL 61820, USA. Email: jmcd@illinois.edu

Article

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The two introductory quotes serve to exemplify some of the contradictory gendered discourses surrounding American football. In the first quote, football is seen as an exclusively male sport; whereas, in the latter quote, Dean Cain expresses the notion that the game, as ‘uniquely American’, is necessarily defined by full access to participation. These conflicting discourses help define American football as a potential site of gen-dered contestation because of the ways that the sport has been traditionally designated as a masculine, aggressive activity that precludes female participants (Koivula, 2001; Postow, 1980). In American football, ‘male athletes are portrayed and perceived as tough, hard players who rarely express emotions other than aggression and anger and only smile to celebrate victory, while women play the role of cheerleaders, who are perceived by the viewer to be feminine and glamorous, exhibiting cheerful emotions and glittering smiles, demonstratively cheering on “their guys”’ (Shaw and Hoeber, 2003: 351). For women to compete with and against men on what is referred to as the gridiron of American football is both to challenge traditional constructions of American masculinity and to question the extent to which democratic ideals of full participation are realized in the American public sphere.

This is a study of just such a competition, staged in the form of a reality TV show called The Gender Bowl (Jordan et al., 2005). The Gender Bowl centered on a full-contact football game between two teams – one all-male and the other all-female. We read The Gender Bowl as both a rupture from and a re-entrenchment of the traditionally gendered, masculinist nature of American football. This ambivalent reading of the con-test is in part because of limitations posed by the structure of the reality TV event itself: the men’s team in The Gender Bowl, for instance, consisted of former high school football players between the ages of 30 and 48,1 while the women’s team consisted of professional female football players at the height of their athletic careers as members of the National Women’s Football Association (NWFA, 2008).2 So, in a very important way, the structure of the contest undermined its viability as a struggle for equality. Nonetheless, our discourse analysis of the transcript from The Gender Bowl (which included more than the sporting contest itself) reveals examples of female participants contesting their traditional exclusion from the masculine domain of American football with male players seeking to preserve entrenched forms of male status and privilege.Additionally, we describe a complex relationship in the dynamics of linguistic gendered conflict in which complementary and symmetrical schizmogenesis (Tannen, 2005: 31, 135) coexist in gendered conflict. As we describe, the central conflict of The Gender Bowl, which is to say the battle-of-the-sexes sporting contest itself, is defined by sym-metrical schizmogenesis. That symmetrical pairing is only put into motion, however, through a critical sequence of linguistic banter defined by complementary schizmogen-esis. This is a case study in which female participants actively appropriate practices of linguistic insult that have been traditionally marked as masculine aspects of all-male sporting events (Adams et al., 2010). Multiple forms of conflict – linguistic and physical – are enacted in The Gender Bowl to amount to a momentary rupture, which is followed by the ultimate reestablishment of concretized social systems.

Through our analysis of The Gender Bowl, we show how the creation, development and reiteration of discourses of masculinity and femininity have been a significant

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mechanism for the gendering of sports and how these discourses are one way that most women’s access and acceptance into American football is undermined. We first present a conceptual framework outlining the development of discourses of masculinity and femininity in sports and how these discourses contribute to the continued existence of gendered sports, and normative boundaries discouraging women’s acceptance into traditionally masculine sports. Finally, in order to gain insight into the development and reiteration of gendered discourses and their influence on individuals’ participation in sports, we engage in an analysis of transcribed media clips from The Gender Bowl.

Conceptual framework

In the sport domain, many gendered discourses prevail centered around the reinforce-ment of masculine hegemony and the reproduction and reinforcement of a ‘White and heterosexual hegemonic femininity’ (Krane et al., 2004: 316). For instance, in trivializa-tion or marginalization gendered discourses, gender relations are instituted as a hierarchy of male domination and female subordination (Pirinen, 1997); and thus, these discourses range from those that seek to reveal and challenge ‘natural’ forms of dominance to one’s seeking to maintain male domination. In contrast to these discourses, egalitarian dis-courses of gender relationships seek to expose discriminatory practices and remove structural or human barriers that prevent females from fully participating in sport. The aim of equality discourses is to ensure equal opportunities for men and women, and these discourses point to cultural conceptions of femininity rather than ‘any inherent limitation of women’s bodies’ as a major barrier to women’s participation in sport (Pirinen, 1997: 239). Finally, in separatist discourse, competitive sport has been criticized for encouraging racial and gender discrimination, male superiority, homophobia, aggres-sion and violence; and, as a result of these criticisms, many sport feminists have sought women-only competitive or non-competitive practices outside the male-dominated sport system (Hargreaves, 1994; Pirinen, 1997).

Despite the presence of discourses serving to contest current gender relations in sport, discourses serving to maintain masculine hegemonic gender boundaries have marginalized those seeking to challenge such ideologies. The incessant verbalization of these discourses make inequitable gender relations in sport appear to be natural when in fact such relations are specious; contemporary sociality is based largely on prejudice, injustice and inequality (McGregor, 2003; Van Dijk, 1993). The vitality and reinforce-ment of these discourses is further maintained by multiple social mechanisms. For example, the gendering of sports is maintained through sport typing, whereby certain sports are defined as male (such as football or boxing), female (such as synchronized swimming or rhythmic gymnastics) or gender neutral on the basis of descriptive and injunctive societal gender norms (Kane, 1995; Laberge and Albert, 2000). As sport typing is justified on the basis of generalized biological differences, women, as a whole, are perceived as not capable of performing such activities, thus continuing to support the continued and wide-scale segregation of sport by gender (Kane, 1995).

Metheny (1965) and Postow (1980) surmised that sports labeled as feminine were ones that allow female participants to remain true to the stereotyped expectations of

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femininity (such as being graceful and nonaggressive) and that provide audiences with spectacles of beauty and aesthetic pleasure. In contrast to these characteristics, Metheny (1965) argued that the attributes of masculine sports include: (a) the utili-zation of body contact to physically overpower the opponent; (b) direct use of bodily force to move heavy objects; (c) projection of body into or through space over dis-tances; and (d) face-to-face competition in situations in which body contact may hap-pen. These characteristics are believed to be suitable expressions of masculine attributes such as aggressiveness, effectiveness and power (Koivula, 2001; Metheny, 1965). Such norms of conflict and antagonism also have linguistic dimensions. As Adams et al. (2010) have shown, in their study of male coaches and players, ‘toxic language’ is used in all-male sporting contexts to both maintain and construct particular forms of masculinity.

As a result of sport typing, for many years women’s sport opportunities have been restricted; however, women have started entering traditionally all-male sports in increasing numbers (Laberge and Albert, 2000; Pirinen, 1997; Wedgwood, 2004). Such entry has been selective and continues to be an ongoing struggle, as they encoun-ter a ‘Catch-22 situation’ in that they compete on unequal terms and are unequally recognized for their achievements (Byrson, 2003). As noted by Byrson, ‘each layer ensnares a certain number of female participants, or would be participants. If the first layer does not get you, then it is very likely that one of the subsequent ones will’ (2003: 307). We see this in the very structure of The Gender Bowl in that young, pro-fessional female athletes are pitted against older, non-professional male quasi-athletes. If the female participants were to defeat their male opponents, such a victory would be conditional.

Current gender relations in sport are likewise maintained by erasing women’s accom-plishments, making selective gender comparisons, ‘regendering’ and classifying female athletes as either mutants (Kane, 1995) or homosexual (Broad, 2001). First, via erasure, the systematic media invisibility of females playing sports exclusively identified as male (such as rugby, ice hockey) serves to protect beliefs that these types of sports and the physical attributes needed to succeed (strength, speed, aggressiveness) are the natural domain of males. Also, the ‘regendering’ of women likewise serves to maintain current gender relations in sport. Regendering is when a female who displays superior athleticism is purported to perform like a male; this discounts female capabilities by equating superior athleticism with maleness (Kane, 1995). Moreover, females who actively participate in traditionally male sports or appropriate stereotypical masculine behavior face being labeled as ‘deviant mutants’. The label refers to women who, as a result of deviating from traditional expectations of femininity, have their standing as real females questioned (Kane, 1995). Many successful female athletes have been labeled as lesbians because of their deviation from traditional gender role behavior (Broad, 2001; Kane, 1995; Koivula, 2001), while others have been subjected to sex tests (such as Caster Semenya3) to prove that they are biological females. Finally, the suppression of evidence of a sport continuum is likewise maintained through selective gender compari-sons when men and women compete together. For example, in a co-ed event, such as a marathon race, the male winner’s time is typically emphasized over the female winner’s time, but it is not recognized or highlighted that the female winner outperformed a

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significant number of men (Kane, 1995). This selective gender comparison serves to privilege men and maintain male hegemony.

Methodology

This study is based on close readings of a transcript of the reality TV show The Gender Bowl (2005), and our focus is on interviews with participants and some filmed talk-in-interaction. Fairclough’s theory and method of critical discourse analysis (CDA) guided our analysis, as CDA aims to show how language is inconspicuously involved in estab-lishing and maintaining current social issues and problems (Fairclough, 1995, 2001; Van Dijk, 1993). CDA is guided by three defining central tenets: (a) discourses are shaped and constrained by social structures (such as class, gender, age) and by culture; (b) discourses shape and constrain individual identities, relationships and systems of knowledge and beliefs; and (c) CDA focuses on the relationship between actual words, discursive practices (i.e. rules and conventions governing thoughts, speech and actions) and the social context (Fairclough, 2001; Huckin, 1997). Thus, in line with these guid-ing tenets, CDA has been defined as the analysis of ‘written texts and spoken words to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality, and bias and how these sources are initiated, maintained, reproduced, and transformed within specific social, economic, political, and historical contexts’ (McGregor, 2003, para. 6).

Data analysis

The television broadcast of The Gender Bowl was transcribed verbatim with special attention placed on the participants’ use of stress, modulation and gestures. (Transcription notations are provided in the Appendix at the end of the article.) The Gender Bowl lasted 2 hours and 25 minutes, and the focus of our analysis was on all pre-game and one-on-one interview talk-in-interaction; we also attended to a short press conference, which is part of the reality TV show, and to voice-over commentary made during the game. It is important to note that, like all reality TV documentary shows, The Gender Bowl depicts an edited version of reality that heightens such things as sensationalism and drama through editing, post-production techniques, scripted behaviors and speech manipulation – all of which are used to attract viewers (Booth, 2004). Despite having some scripted scenes, reality TV shows, in featuring spontaneous talk-in-interaction, can be revealing in terms of societal values and behaviors. We view The Gender Bowl as a highly filtered, yet highly revealing site of linguistic and physical contestation.

In line with the tenets of CDA, analyses were conducted at three levels: (a) the actual text; (b) the discursive practices; and (c) the larger social context (Fairclough, 1995). At the text level, a microanalysis of the sentences, phrases and words was conducted to look for overt and subtle manifestation of dominance. CDA was used to examine linguistic choices, primarily pertaining to rhetorical constructions and lexical choices. In particu-lar, we looked for insinuations, omissions, presuppositions and connotations. An analysis of the discursive practices entailed an analysis of gendered rules, expectations and norms that dictate socially accepted behavior and influence how individuals think, act and speak (McGregor, 2003). At the third level, an analysis of the immediate social context,

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The Gender Bowl, and gendered discourses in the larger US society, was conducted to uncover conventions that determined the appropriateness or inappropriateness of American football for females.

Findings

What we define as the ‘battle of the sexes’ frame is the predominant structuring feature of The Gender Bowl, meaning that most utterances in the event index this particular kind of sporting contest and cultural drama. As Tannen describes, a frame is ‘a subordinate category within which meaning must be interpreted’ and situated language use is only understood ‘by reference to a frame’ (2005: 32). The ‘battle of the sexes’ discourse is anchored in the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs; a central feature of such events is a ‘patriarchal fear of women winning the battle’ (Sunderland, 2004: 43) and thus unsettling codified notions of separate gendered spheres. There is an implicit assumption that, via such a sporting contest, one group can gain or maintain an advantage at the expense of the other. Sport, then, is seen as a particularly salient cultural battlefield for larger societal issues.

In the case of the football game at the center of The Gender Bowl, the battle-of-the-sexes frame is indexed by men and women football players and coaches in different ways. Specifically, the interdiscursivity of two discourses of gender relations is appar-ent: a discourse of conservative gender relations and an opposing discourse of egali-tarian gender relations (Lazar, 2000). This interdiscursivity, which is oppositional, is brought into being in the encounter through the linguistic appropriation (by the female participants) of a discourse of insult. The particular form of insult that is adopted by the female participants has been described as characteristic of all-male talk-in-interaction in mainstream organized sport (Adams et al., 2010). In The Gender Bowl, the male partici-pants routinely reveal commitments to maintaining gender inequality and conservatism. The conservative discourse of gender relations, which is aligned with trivialization and marginalization discourses, favors a traditional, asymmetrical relationship between females and males. Through this discourse, women and men are encouraged to abide with the circumscriptions inherent in traditional gender roles, responsibilities and expec-tations. A battle-of-the-sexes event is referred to by the male participants as an opportu-nity to maintain superior male athletic ability and showcase inferior female abilities, regardless of age or training.

In contrast, following their strategic deployment of insult, the female football players referred to the battle-of-the-sexes event as an opportunity to ultimately establish gender equality. Egalitarian discourses counter gender defined roles and strive for gender parity in all aspects of public and personal life (Lazar, 2000; Pirinen, 1997). The contest, for the female participants, seemed to be viewed as a way to engage in what we have referred to as symmetrical schizmogenesis, or mirrored conflictual behavior, as a mechanism for ultimately repairing rifts and disparities between men and women.

The appropriation of insult

In their study of an all-male British football (soccer) team, Adams et al. (2010: 293) find that ‘the construction and regulation of masculinity’ is established and maintained

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by ‘two types of discourses … (a) masculinity establishing discourse and (b) masculinity challenging discourse’. In this research, insult is found to be a key part of the challenging discourse and integral to the maintenance of normative male gender in the context of competitive sport. Insult helps with the regulation of dominant forms of masculinity at multiple levels. Hypermasculinity is both productive of and produced by many forms of mainstream sporting behavior. As Esera Tuaolo (2006: 3) has written in his autobio-graphical account of being a closeted gay man in the National Football League in the USA: ‘In other words, [the other players] would have taken me out so that their own masculinity would not be questioned for playing alongside a sissy’. Hypermasculine American football is a zone of strict internal policing.

As reality TV programming, The Gender Bowl begins with several drama-establishing scenes. The narrative begins with the over-30 male participants being recruited to the team and then met with a surprise: their opponents will be female professional football players. In the initial encounter between the two teams, members of the all-female team begin to insult the male participants with a ‘male challenging discourse’ focused on questioning virility. Excerpts 1 and 2, uttered by female participants, demonstrate this:

1. I see some balding going on back there. What’s up with that? Some gray- Some gray. What’s all this? ((Points at her stomach)) Big boy 77, what’s all this? ((taps her stomach)) Where your other shoe at? Ya’ll look broke down. BROKE.. DOWN!

2. <in a soft baby voice>That’s okay, I’ll rub your tummy for you.>

This verbal performance, initiated by female participants long before the actual football game begins, comprises the beginning of the contest. It is through the appropriation of the modality of insult that the female participants both attempt to ‘level the playing field’ and incite animosity in the men – a requisite for the contest to take place. The use of insult functions in the exchange as what Tannen has described as complementary schizmogenesis (2005: 31, 135). Unlike the sporting contest itself, which is marked by symmetrical physical conflict, this moment in The Gender Bowl is marked by comple-mentary (or quite different) linguistic behavior: the female participants co-opt discourse patterns marked as masculine in order to incite rage in the men. Of course, it is this rage that American football depends upon. Complementary and symmetrical schizmogenesis work in tandem in this instance of gendered conflict, with the female participants upset-ting established balances of order in order to gain their chance, through the symmetrical sporting contest, to achieve their goals of gender equity.

Two responses made by male participants in response to insults from female partici-pants index the extent to which verbal dueling (Schwebel, 1997) both creates a sense of rupture and becomes integral to setting up the physical conflict:

3. Coach: When those women started calling them out, started talking noise. They [the male players] saw that they were for real. They were going to bring it. A sense of urgency came among them.

4. Men’s assistant coach: I don’t like them coming into our house and talking smack to us on our field about what they’re going to do to us. This is our game. This is our sport. Always has been. If we lose this game we are forever gonna be known as the guys who let women in to … What’s next?

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As the coach of the all-male team says, ‘a sense of urgency came among them [i.e. the male players]’. It is worth noting that without this sense of urgency (rhetoricians would call it a verbally constructed exigence [Bitzer, 1968]) on the all-male side of the conflict, the game would not transpire. Without the game, the socio-political goals of the female participants (discussed below) could not be initiated. It is through the appropriation and then deployment of insult that the female contestants bring the sporting contest that is at the center of The Gender Bowl into existence. A verbal battle initiates the physical battle on the field.

Discourse of conservative gender relations

Attempts by the female participants in The Gender Bowl to disrupt longstanding power relations were not met without a fight. Discourses of conservative gender relations were expressed by the male football players and coaches, and were evidenced in four primary ways: (a) via expressions of perceived biological gender differences; (b) with references to females lacking football cultural capital; (c) through the reiteration of gender stereo-types; and (d) via the use of asymmetric denotations to reference men and women.

Biological gender differences. In the sports realm, there is a lens of gender polarization which works to maintain the notion that males and females’ athletic abilities are inher-ently different (Cahn, 1994; Coakley, 2004). This discourse of biological gender differ-ences makes unnecessary and tenuous category distinctions that work against women’s interests (Sunderland, 2004). Evidence of these perceived biological differences is provided in the following exemplary statements, as the men implicitly refer to women as athletically inferior:

5. When I saw the women – I was disappointed because I wanted to play – and nothing against the women or anything like that, but I wanted to play a real football game. You know? … There are two absolutes. You know. Women cannot write their names in the snow and they can’t play football with men.

6. I don’t believe in any way, shape or form that we’re going to lose to – to this team, to these women.

As reflected in statement 5, there is a sense that the presence of women on the football field diminishes the ‘reality’ of the game, and this reality is grounded in the ‘absolute’ reference to male genitalia. In line with battle-of-the-sexes discourse, perceived supe-riority of men to women is grounded in the conviction that the men’s football team would not lose to the women’s team. The contest is seen, then, as an opportunity to reaffirm male embodied superiority.

Notions of gendered superiority were physically embodied in several ways in the conflict. This was reinforced by the fact that the women used a smaller football (while on offense) than the men. Many sports such as basketball and handball likewise implement smaller balls for women’s sports – even though there is no evidence to show that women cannot use a same-size or larger ball than men. Thus, the discursive construction of women, as embodied in ways that are athletically inferior to men, helps to ensure that

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women remain marginalized from participating in American football. This ideology of female inferiority persists, however, not because of biology but because of ‘socially constructed and rigidly maintained sport structures’ (Kane, 1995: 201).

Cultural capital differences. In addition to the men’s conceptions about women’s athletic inferiority, some male participants in the event likewise questioned whether the women had the mental capacity to comprehend the seemingly complex logistics of American football. Two statements of this kind were made by male participants:

7. Women.. DON’T understand football.8. Women don’t understand football because genetically they weren’t made up that way.

American football, in these utterances, is not only a physical but an intellectual all-male enterprise. This notion, expressed by several male participants, that women do not and cannot understand football, attempts to render football as akin to other male-dominated domains such as science and engineering. The game is constructed in this way as a con-ceptual edifice that women cannot enter, not due to exclusion but because of embodied female shortcomings. Women are unfit for comprehending the apparent complexity of the game, not because of their training but because of their ‘genes’. In this way, again, it is the female body that is perceived as too overly encumbered to allow for full participa-tion in the game. Seen another way, the threat that women pose is not only participatory, but a threat of the female body. In the homosocial, close-contact environment of American football, it is the female body and its perceived valences that intrude upon the game. Women, it is presumed, have an unsuitable ‘nature’ and physical build. As professional football players, it can be taken for granted that the female participants have expansive knowledge of the logistics of American football, but as a result of societal stereotypes, even when women have a high degree of football cultural capital, they are only admitted as ‘honorary’ lads (Whannel, 2007). Further, Whannel asserts that few females ‘develop that train-spotter fanaticism that permits the squirrelly array of information that can be flourished to prove credentials’ (2007: 14).

Prevalence of gender stereotypes. Stereotypical expectations of femininity include such characteristics as being graceful and nonaggressive (Koivula, 2001; Metheny, 1965). An example of the influence that gender stereotypes have on women’s sport participation options is illustrated in the following comment made by the assistant coach of the all-male team:

9. Women are beautiful creatures. We as men have been taught to open doors for women, walk on the sidewalk against the street for women, protect and to provide for women. They do not belong in a football game with us.

The assistant coach’s depiction of women reflects traditional gender typifications of ‘The Lady’ (Boles and Atkinson, 1988; Clinton, 1982). According to Clinton (1982), prescrip-tive temperamental and behavioral characteristics of a ‘lady’ include being good, deli-cate, innocent, kind, weak, pious and calm. Although originating in the antebellum

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period, these social ideas of womanhood have not died and have been reiterated for generations. These characteristics, along with the coach’s assertion that women be nur-tured, protected and provided for, contradict the aggressive nature of football.

The women were likewise aware of gender defined social expectations, as illus-trated in a comment made by Cheryl, one of the tight ends for the women’s team:

10. Men don’t accept women playing football becaus:e it’s a very physical:, aggressive game. And men don’t like to think of women being physical and aggressive.

Similar to the assistant coach’s comments, Cheryl’s statement highlights the prevalent notion that women’s participation in American football contradicts these stereotypical expectations and thus is met with disapproval (Koivula, 2001). Cheryl’s comment is subtly different from that of the assistant coach, though, as he portrays anxiety on behalf of the men as emanating from a male desire to protect women while Cheryl directly describes female players as a threat to men.

Use of asymmetric denotations for women. Asymmetric denotations based on gender were highly prevalent in The Gender Bowl. Asymmetric denotations are observed when polar opposite terms of address, such as boy and girl and man and woman, are used inconsistently when referring to men and women of similar age or status (Mean, 2001). For example, excerpts 11, 12 and 13 illustrate the discursive use of ‘girls’ by the male foot-ball players to reference the females. The term was used five times throughout The Gen-der Bowl – all by the men.

11. I’m going to knock down big girls.12. We’re not going to loose PERIOD, but I DEFINITELY don’t want to lose to any girls. I

want to be able to slee:p at night alright.13. You think that I am going to let these girls come in and walk in on me, bring me down in

front of the nation. It’s serious.

Terms of address can be used to denote power and solidarity, and the significance of particular forms of address lies in the history of pattern usage that marks them with respect and affection or with contempt or condescension (McConnell-Ginet, 1988; Mean, 2001). For example, addressing an adult female by calling her ‘girl’ is viewed by many as offensive and demeaning to women, especially due to the parallel objection to use of the word ‘boy’ for a male past puberty. The word ‘girl’ insinuates a lower social status compared to adult males. However, in certain interactions, typically female–female, the use of the term ‘girl’ can be used to express a supportive and friendly connection and it is not always inappropriately juvenilizing. This follows Van Dijk’s assertion that ‘occa-sional, incidental, or personal breaches of discourse rules are not, as such, expressions of dominance. This is the case only if such violations are generalized, occur in text and talk directed at, or about, specific dominated groups only, and if there are no contextual justifications other than such group membership’ (1993: 261).

Accordingly, in the context of The Gender Bowl, we surmise that referring to the women as ‘girls’ was not done with respect and affection and is a manifestation of efforts

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to maintain and assert male dominance. The term ‘girl’ was used condescendingly as an expression of the men not fully respecting their female opponents. Similar to saying that someone ‘plays like a girl’ or ‘throws like a girl’ (Young, 1998), the reference to women as girls is used derogatorily. By not utilizing an age-appropriate label, the men are in essence downgrading the perception of women’s athletic ability while asserting that such ability is forever embodied as a lack. Additionally, this frequent condescension of women to girls further reinforces the perception that the ‘battle of the sexes’ is unequal, with women being on a lower level than men.

In contrast to the men’s use of the term ‘girls’ to address the women, the women use the less pejorative addresses ‘ladies’ or ‘women’ to reference one another:

14. Gentlemen, we are the ladies of the National Women’s Football Association, your oppo-nents in The Gender Bowl.

15. LADIES let’s scho:ol these men.

The only time throughout the event that the women were referenced as ladies by the men was at the end when the quarterback, Ron Stage, commented: ‘Of most respect to you ladies. Good luck to you, but like we’ve always said, it’s a man’s game’. Although the low status of the female players is contested with the term ‘ladies’, male participants deployed the term ‘girl’ to reinforce the notion that American football is not meant to be played by women. The term ‘women’ was used 35 times throughout the show – 23 times by the men and 12 times by the women.

Discourse of egalitarian gender relations

In contrast to the ways in which the battle-of-the-sexes discourse was engaged with by the male participants, the women’s discourse is defined by equality between opponents. The discourse of egalitarianism in The Gender Bowl is manifested through discourses that support perceived biological gender similarities and the struggle for equal opportunities.

Biological gender similarities. As evidenced in the males’ discourses of conservatism, the male participants express views of the women as possessing a similar or lower level of athleticism than they do. These suppositions, however, are in contrast to the women’s view of their athleticism. For example, three of the female players made the following comments:

16. I- I am physically in better shape than EVERY guy on that team.17. I definitely think that women have the ability to be JUST as aggressive as men.18. I’m not going to sit here and say that I can match up with every single one of those guys

standing over there, but as a team we can match up against that team over there.

These statements reveal that the women perceive that they are on equal or near-equal terms in the competition, and that the ‘battle of the sexes’ is an equitable contest. Additionally, in contrast to the men’s statements, their comments reveal that they feel

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they are athletically and mentally similar or superior to the male football players – thus supporting Kane’s (1995) conviction that every elite male can’t outperform every elite female in the same sports.

Equal opportunities discourse. The female players constantly reiterated their purpose of seeking parity which motivated them in The Gender Bowl:

19. My grandmother was born without the right to vote.. and I was born without the right to play football.

20. When I was younger there weren’t any opportunities for football. There were limited opportunities for women in sports period.

21. This is our fight for the right to play and be taken seriously.22. <solemn> Remember the struggles of all the women before us who ever fought for any

great cause that we take for granted today. >23. I really- REALLY want to win this game because I believe that we will open the eyes of

many Americans.

As noted in excerpt 19, through the reference to women fighting for the right to vote, access to football is about much broader forms of societal access and has a significant political dimension. By referencing the women’s suffrage movement in the USA, these women feel that they have been denied equitable opportunities in sports; thus, the women show that they not only want to prove that they can compete and beat men in American football, but also that they can redefine American football as a sport not just for men. The intent of this redefining of the sport is to ‘open the eyes of many Americans’ and to elicit increased sports opportunities for all women.

The ramifications of conflicting gendered discourses

The presence of these conflicting gendered discourses raises the following questions: What are the consequences of the women’s fight for acceptance into American football, and what opportunities as well as gender inequalities are created and maintained as a result of these discourses? We posit that three main consequences and opportunities emerge. First, the women participating in this traditionally masculine domain appropri-ated certain linguistic practices and behaviors traditionally marked as masculine. A sec-ond ramification of females entering traditionally masculine sports is that men expressed feelings that their manhood is challenged. Third, we surmise that the normative bound-aries that separate male and female sports gradually become dismantled (even though reification exists).

The appropriation of masculine behavior. When the women competed in The Gender Bowl, they consciously or unconsciously appropriated stereotypical masculine behavior and language practices in order to be successful. For example, some of the women made the following comments:

24. I have to be a man to prove that women can play football.25. I like cracking heads you know? <laughs>That’s what I like.>

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26. When I’m in the game, I’m the animal.27. You don’t think we’re for real. I’ll smack you down to the ground. You know, I’ll take

them on. I’m not afraid.28. If we have to pound on these old guys just to prove a point we are definitely ready to do

that.

As evidenced in excerpt 24, the player explicitly equates playing football with not only masculine behavior, but ‘be[ing] a man’. Additionally, in excerpts 25–8, the association of masculine behavior with football is implicitly revealed through the women’s use of stereotypical masculine aggressiveness (i.e. being an ‘animal’, ‘smack you down to the ground’ and ‘pound on these old guys’). When women participate in traditionally mascu-line sports, it contradicts the ideological notion that women are frail and vulnerable, but it simultaneously reaffirms values and experiences of aggression and violence (Coakley, 2004). As such, proponents of separatist discourses encourage the formulation of women-only competitive and noncompetitive sports that discourage aggression and violence. The avoidance of these traits, however, does not challenge societal gender expectations or assist women in their fight for parity, as women are still encouraged to maintain a societally defined femininity.

Manhood challenged. Similar to other researchers, Duncan and Messner (1998: 170) noted that sport is a crucial site for the construction of male identity and that it ‘provides opportunities for men to assert their dominance at a time when male hegemony is con-tinually challenged and opposed in everyday life’. Thus, when women play American football, they pose a direct threat to a highly salient masculine identity category (Snyder and Spreitzer, 1989). As embodied in excerpts 29 and 30, this threat was very apparent in The Gender Bowl:

29. Coach Larry Brown speaking to the team: This game guys, has tremendous magnitudes, and I have to come clean. It is not the type of game that you think. It is a totally different game and it has an enormous magnitude. Unbelievable, but it’s a different game. The opponents that you are going to play, you guys are going to meet them in a second, and there is a lot riding on this.

30. Men’s assistant coach: LET’S PROTECT THIS GAME, PROTECT OUR MANHOOD. AND PROTECT THIS SPORT! THIS IS OUR HOUSE. NO ONE’S COMING HERE AND TAKING AWAY OUR MANHOOD!

There is a cultural commonplace that certain sports such as football or hockey turn a boy into a man, and as a result sports have been used as an agent to socially construct mas-culinities and to define manhood (Coakley, 2004). As Tuaolo (2006) notes, participants in sports such as professional football take on the role of self-policing gender and sex-ual-orientation norms. Sabo and Panepinto (1990) surmise that American football is used as a male initiation rite, and through football, boys learn appropriate masculine behaviors, beliefs and values, and what the dominant culture determines it means to ‘be a man’. The assistant coach’s statements explicitly state that the men’s manhood is at stake if they lose this game. Coach Larry Brown’s statement likewise expresses a feeling of uneasiness when he contemplates a possible defeat by the women. Hence, when

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women play American football, the perception is that they are interfering with the homosocial, all-male and time-honored initiation rite into manhood. Also, according to traditional gender expectations, males are regarded as athletically superior to women; thus, when a woman beats a man in sport, his manhood is challenged and undermined.

Male participants evidence awareness about the consequences of losing this football game, as seen in the following statements:

31. You think that I am going to let these girls come in and walk in on ME? Bring me down in front of the nation?.. IT’S SERIOUS.

32. I will tape myself up until I have to be carried off the field before we <laughing>lose to a bunch of women in front of national TV.>

33. I don’t want to be a part of the first coaching staff that loses to women in a football game. I don’t want to be associated with that, just like those guys don’t want to be associated with being the players that lose.

34. If by some wi:ld freaking nature that we lost to these women…This tells people – this is how Texas would respond. They’d have my bags packed at the Oklahoma border and they’d be waiting on me. I could never go back into that state again. I would have to move north. No question.

35. If I’m one of the first guys to lose to women in a football game it’s going to be kinda dif-ficult and <laughing>everyone would be making fun of me too and they would have a right. >

36. As a man’s man, if I coach this team and it does not come out in a winning fashion – I swear to you that it’s been unthinkable a lot of thoughts have been running through my head today. I think I may leave the country for a little while.

These statements show that perceived consequences of losing to women include being shunned and teased by others. The men’s fears are intensified by the fact that if they lose against women, that loss will be nationally publicized. Additionally, some of the men’s statements imply that they would not feel like a ‘man’ anymore. It is interesting to note how many of the men hold an unfounded assumption that they would be the first men to lose to women in a sports competition. Previous unknown and known matches between men and women, such as Billy Jean King’s defeat of Bobby Riggs in a ‘battle of the sexes’ tennis match, have demonstrated that women can outcompete or compete on an equal level with men (Coakley, 2004). The persistent recurrence of battle-of-the-sexes events suggests, however, that such victories on behalf of female competitors offer only temporary and partial ruptures in the larger, hegemonic systems of male dominance.

Breakdown of gendered normative boundaries. A third consequence of women entering traditionally masculine sports was evident in the men’s fear that if they lose this game, the normative boundaries that separate male and female sports will be brought down. To illustrate, the assistant coach of the men’s team and one of the male players made the following comments:

37. <irritated>I don’t like them coming into OUR HOUSE and talking smack to us on our field about what they’re going to do to us. This is our game. This is our sport. Always has been. If we lose this game we are forever gonna be known as the guys who let women in to – What’s next?>

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38. <irritated>You’re not seeing guys trying to play field hockey teams. We’re not suiting up to play field hockey. We’re not suiting up to play – you know? Synchronized swimming with the women. You know. Why can’t football just be for men? >

These statements reflect the guarding of American football from women. American foot-ball is deemed male territory (such as our house, our game, our sport); thus, the percep-tion exists that if the women win this game, not only do they gain entrance into American football, but they may gain more opportunities to encroach on whatever is perceived as the male domain. Further, excerpt 38 reiterates discourses of acceptable sports for women (i.e. field hockey and synchronized swimming) and an acceptable sport for men (i.e. football). Other sports where men succeed, such as ice dancing and gymnastics, are not on this participant’s list.

In response to the perception that the manhood of the male participants is threatened and that women are encroaching upon male sports, male participants in The Gender Bowl responded in ways to defend their turf. These responses were verbalized in the following statements:

39. Men’s assistant coach: I told the guys you need to hit them so hard that they realize they made a career decision by doing that.. in the wrong way.

40. And it’s going to be a lot of pain.41. The VERY first play, we have to send a message.

One of the fears of women participating in ‘male’ sports is that men feel that they cannot be aggressive enough because they do not want to hurt the ‘frail’ women; however, contrary to the men toning down their physical aggression, they express desires to make sure that these women understand the consequences of their actions (Coakley, 2004). As evidenced in excerpts 39–41, the men in The Gender Bowl want to show aggression in order to reaffirm the masculine nature of the sport.

Conclusion

This analysis explored the strategic appropriation of insult by female participants and the presence of gendered discourses in The Gender Bowl, a football game pitting men and women against each other. The analysis of The Gender Bowl revealed that a longstanding battle-of-the-sexes discourse was constructed differently for the male and female football players. In the discourses of conservative gender relations, the men viewed the women as having physical, intellectual and cultural capital deficiencies, and they referred back to gender stereotypes that would support the exclusion of women from American football. Women playing football challenge these stereotypes that categorize sports as male or female and, thus, could undermine the legitimacy of the sport gender binary. In contrast, the discourses of egalitarian gender relations revealed that the women did not hold the belief that they lacked the necessary human capital to compete with the men, and as a result they sought equitable treatment. These discourses could help facilitate positive change in the overall athletic community by expanding people’s assumptions of the boundaries and appropriacy of conventions within gender roles, and also by increasing sport participation opportunities.

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Although these competing discourses were revealed in the analysis of The Gender Bowl, one cannot negate the role that media plays in shaping discourses. As noted by Van Dijk (1993), one way of enacting power is by controlling the context. This is to say that it is probable that the producers or editors of this instance of reality TV constructed the discourse in a way to not only support the presence of a battle-of-the-sexes discourse, but also to present competing discourses and, thus, a kind of gendered drama. A faction of men on the football team could have espoused discourses of egalitarian gender relations, but their voices could have been silenced. The verbalization of egali-tarian discourses by the men would aid the women’s fight to undermine the legitimacy of masculine hegemonic discourses surrounding American football and other ‘male’ sports and dismantle the normative gender boundaries in sport, as the zealots for equality would come from both sexes.

The involvement of men in the discontinuation of the gender sport binary is impera-tive, because when the women are on one end of the battle promoting egalitarian gender relations and the men are on the other side promoting conservative gender relations, the current systems of inequality are maintained because of the dominant nature of conserva-tive discourses. For those females who have the power to shape gender relations in sport, many will not lead a social transformation of sports because ‘they have become part of the dominant hegemonic sport group – they are the major beneficiaries of the current social arrangements in sport’ (Sage, 1998: 77). Thus, as the individuals in power in the sports domain are predominantly White males (see Coakley, 2004; Lapchick, 2008), change will only occur at the lower levels of sports when those in power change ideologies.

Notes

1. The women’s ages were not disclosed.2. The NWFA was formed in August of 2000 by Catherine Masters and consisted of over 40

teams throughout the entire USA; however, the association did not field any teams in 2009. As the NWFA did not field any teams during the 2009 season, all but one team joined the Women’s Football Alliance or Independent Women’s Football League.

3. The International Association of Athletics Federations mandated the testing of South African athlete Caster Semenya after she recorded record times in the 800-meter race (Levy, 2009).

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Appendix: Transcription conventions

((words)) Double parentheses enclose transcriber’s comments, in italics.? A question mark indicates a relatively strong rising intonation.. A period indicates a falling, final intonation., A comma indicates a continuing intonation.. . Dots indicate silence (more dots indicate a longer silence).: A colon indicates an elongated sound.CAPS Capitals indicate emphatic stress.<laughs> Angle brackets enclose descriptions of vocal noises, such as laughs,

coughs.<manner>words> Angle brackets enclosed descriptions of the manner in which an

utterance is spoken, such as high-pitched, laughing, incredulous.The transcript notation is adapted from Tannen et al. (2007).

Jacqueline McDowell is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism. She received her PhD in kinesiology, with an emphasis on sport management, from Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on issues of diversity and inclusion in sport organizations.

Spencer Schaffner is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the department of English. He received his PhD in language and rhetoric from the University of Washington. He has published in such journals as the Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Ethos, JAC, Kairos and American Literary History.

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